Microsoft today announced beta availability of a new free e-mail service that it's calling Outlook.com. The company is positioning it as a fresh, clean mail interface that will be touch-friendly, respectful of your privacy, and accessible from any device.

Enlarge/ The things down the right hand side are advertisements, though they don't immediately look like it.

Even with the new look, Outlook.com will be familiar to anyone who's used a Web mail client before. The basic layout is the same as Hotmail uses: folders on the left, messages in the middle, and advertisements on the right.

It's that third advertising panel that has arguably seen the biggest set of functional changes. Not only is the way it's used for advertising smart, it's also used for some non-advertising features too.

Microsoft has long maintained that its approach to advertising in Hotmail is superior to Gmail's, because Hotmail's advertisements don't use the contents of private mail to improve targeting (Gmail's do). With Outlook.com, Microsoft goes a step further. If you open up a mail from a real person (rather than a mailshot or similar from a corporation) then instead of showing you advertisements, the right-hand pane will show you information about that person, such as their most recent Twitter or Facebook update, their picture, and so on.

Enlarge/ For personal mail, the right-hand pane switches to show status updates. You can even reply or like statuses inline.

When determining personhood, the system considers such things as whether the person is listed in your contacts, and whether they can be found on Facebook or Twitter. The determination is heuristic and will be tuned over time.

When an advertisement is shown, it'll appear as simple text in a box. Mouse over the text and they can show images or other richer content.

The advertising pane can also be completely replaced by an instant messaging pane. Chatting with both Windows Messenger and Facebook contacts is supported today, and in the coming months, Microsoft will extend this to integrate Skype video chat.

Enlarge/ It's not there yet, but one day Skype will be integrated, in much the same way as it's currently integrated with Facebook.

Enlarge/ The People service has more than a hint of the Windows 8 look and feel to it.

Microsoft is giving a similar visual revamp to its other online services, including calendar, contacts (now renamed "People"), and SkyDrive. These changes will be rolling out in coming weeks or months, with only People available immediately. The People service shares the same Facebook and Twitter integration to show your contacts from a range of services, and it too is likely to gain Skype integration down the line.

Despite the new name, the Outlook.com service is very much a successor to Hotmail. Existing Hotmail users can switch to Outlook.com from their settings menu (and revert back if they don't like what they see), and once the service is stable and out of beta, Microsoft will begin migrating Hotmail users en masse. The name change is an attempt to move past the somewhat tarnished image that Hotmail has gained over the years.

Under the hood, Outlook.com doesn't change a lot. Inbox size is still more or less "unlimited," large attachments (up to 300MB) are sent via SkyDrive, there's still no support for IMAP clients, and the Web front-end offers no offline access.

Switching between services again has something of the Windows 8 feel to it.

Overall, the new interface is an improvement on what Hotmail previously had to offer, and the greater messaging and social networking integration is a sensible addition (that is set to get even better with Skype integration). The consistent branding may also provide a boost for both Windows 8 and Windows Phone, as users become more accustomed to the look and feel.

But in a world where device-based access is becoming increasingly important—Microsoft says that about 50 percent of current Hotmail users use the service through a smartphone or similar—the ability to win users with a better Web user interface seems limited.

Woah, another reasonably smart move by Microsoft. Outlook is respected, or at least recognized as the standard corporate email and I think this will allow people to have Microsoft addresses without being looked down upon by the. At least as much.

Pretty nice so far. Particularly the advertising choices made. I essentially stopped using Gmail because of their ad methods, but I missed the interface and flexibility. Now I don't have to choose. I get a nice interface AND my privacy.

Looks great, MS really seems to have gotten religion on the concept of providing a consistent look/feel. Like it or not, at least they're committed to it. The Live stuff looks so dated when you go back to it after this.

And, for bonus points, they zing the crap out of Gmail in the intro to their promo vid, lol.

Does this give you a new address of sorts? It feels like an web version of desktop Outlook from what I've tried.

Seems like if you have a gmail address for your microsoft ID. Any mail sent from outlook.com is in a "Sent on Behalf of <address here>" form. If you reply to that mail, it goes to the original address. Ofcourse, like desktop outlook, you can add multiple addresses to be handled by Outlook.com. So I'm guessing for hotmail, it's treated the same way, it's just an address that's added to Outlook, but you can still access the original Hotmail. Has anyone tried adding multiple emails? What if someone sends you a calendar invite to specific email? Can the calendar filter based on account? or do those get treated as a single entity now attached to your microsoft live id?

This sounds great as a tool to manage mulitple email accounts, just I feel it's a bit confusing for your average computer user.

Looks really slick and user friendly but one of the long-standing issues with Microsoft and email is the annoying tendency to change the name of the service. Lately, every two or three years it's been Hotmail, MSN Mail, MSN Hotmail, etc. Now MS is trying to capitalize on it's popular Outlook application. I wish MS would just pick one and stick with it. What's next, xxxxxx@entourage.com?

Does this give you a new address of sorts? It feels like an web version of desktop Outlook from what I've tried.

You can use your current Hotmail address. Also, Outlook.com is now either a registration option or alias option.

People been going a bit crazy on The Verge for aliases. I got a two character email address. Colour me shocked.

Ah found it! Yea, this is neat, I can have my personal, gaming, professional emails all seperated and organized in one source now. The aliasing feature is really nice, I like how easy it was to change my live ID completely too.

Pretty nice so far. Particularly the advertising choices made. I essentially stopped using Gmail because of their ad methods, but I missed the interface and flexibility. Now I don't have to choose. I get a nice interface AND my privacy.

Conversely, I've stuck with Gmail BECAUSE of their ad methods. Despite the Fox News/WSJ campaign to paint Google as the top privacy killer of the Internet, anyone who has actually browsed through the Privacy policies/Terms of Service for various online services like Facebook, Yahoo, Juno, etc. it's pretty clear that Google has the most transparent and most non-legalese one out there. I don't think it's a good idea for just one company, even Google, to have control over so much information. It's never a good thing to allow a monopoly of anything, diversity is always a better in the long run. But right now there's a massive battle going on for corporate control of the Internet and most of the ones involved, like Apple and Facebook/Microsoft, are hardly known for supporting a free, open Internet. They want to build a walled-garden, vendor-locked, pay-for, online world. At least Google's business model is based on a free, open Internet.

"It's not there yet, but one day Skype will be integrated, in much the same way as it's currently integrated with Facebook."

So, it'll require a browser plugin and a bunch of crap hidden all over your registry and system and task scheduler (took me several days to spot that part) under the guise of an updater that will make it a huge pain in the ass to remove? Oh, joy.

EDIT: "once the service is stable and out of beta, Microsoft will begin migrating Hotmail users en masse." Yay for forced change for the sake of change - and for more "social" integration to get more data on you for their marketing division. :/

You'll have to do it twice, once into a @hotmail address, then again to an @outlook address.

This will give you an outlook address, and if you want, you could also link the .me address to it(and gmail and could also make more outlook addresses as aliases), so you can use it as a centralized hub to control all of your email.

But right now there's a massive battle going on for corporate control of the Internet and most of the ones involved, like Apple and Facebook/Microsoft, are hardly known for supporting a free, open Internet. They want to build a walled-garden, vendor-locked, pay-for, online world. At least Google's business model is based on a free, open Internet.

Yes, they want free and open because that's how they make their money. I don't believe in the altruism of corporations, and frankly I trust companies that want me to give them money for products I think are valuable far more than ones that want to give me stuff for free so that they can use me and my information to make money from others. I'm willing to pay for my privacy and good products because I have money and like making a choice. When the only options are "give us your identity" that's not even a choice anymore.

I´m admittedly not a huge fan of all that Metro style thing, but one thing that REALLY irks me is the ghastly combination of colours among those "tiles".

Will there be some sort of colour filter or colour presets to ensure that the different colours used will at least SOMEWHAT fit together? As in "various shades of yellow, orange, red" or "purple, blue, baby blue"?

So, it'll require a browser plugin and a bunch of crap hidden all over your registry and system and task scheduler (took me several days to spot that part) under the guise of an updater that will make it a huge pain in the ass to remove? Oh, joy./

You realize there are video teleconf features in HTML5, right? This can be done without plugins...and given they block plugins from their own tablet browser, it seems likely they'd avoid plugins. After all, they'd want their service to work correctly on their tablets, no? Conspiracy theory fail.

Edit: According to @tomwarren from The Verge on Twitter, it will use a plugin. He didn't give a source though and I can't find anyone else saying that. Hope not, since it really doesn't need it...

Is Outlook.com related to Office 365? Or, just because they're both web-based and provide similar services, it really means nothing?

Is Skydrive going to become Sharepoint.com?

It just seems to be another layer of confusion/branding that signals little more than a change in user interface. It's not a "new" product. It's not a new offering. It's a

Live Mail was called Windows Live Hotmail. Windows Live Mail was the desktop mail client. Outlook.com was used for something before, but now it's replacing Hotmail. Office 365 is either a paid hosted Exchange/SharePoint or MS Office sub (called Office 365 Home Premium)

Is Outlook.com related to Office 365? Or, just because they're both web-based and provide similar services, it really means nothing?

Is Skydrive going to become Sharepoint.com?

It just seems to be another layer of confusion/branding that signals little more than a change in user interface. It's not a "new" product. It's not a new offering. It's a

It would be nice if MS would layout a road map so that we can see where they are going with all these new products and services. They are obviously overhauling everything they own. I think their users deserve a heads up once in a while.

It's 2012 and you STILL can't use any other protocol than POP to connect from a desktop mail client? No deal. Seriously, the lack of IMAP or Exchange for other than mobile devices is starting to be a really bad joke.

It's 2012 and you STILL can't use any other protocol than POP to connect from a desktop mail client? No deal. Seriously, the lack of IMAP or Exchange for other than mobile devices is starting to be a really bad joke.

Outlook 2013 can do Exchange ActiveSync to get Hotmail, Windows Live Mail can obviously connect and the built-in Mail client in Windows 8 can connect.